The present disclosure relates to an image forming apparatus that forms an image on a sheet, and more particularly to a technique to control the operation when a non-conforming toner container is mounted.
Existing image forming apparatuses generally include a photoconductor drum serving as an image carrier, a charging device that electrically charges the photoconductor drum, an exposure device emits a laser beam based on a source document onto the surface of the electrically charged photoconductor drum, to thereby form a latent image of the source document on the surface of the photoconductor drum, a developing device that visualizes the latent image with a toner, a transfer roller for transferring the visualized toner image onto a sheet, a fixing device that fixes the transferred toner image on the sheet, and a cleaning device that removes residual toner on the surface of the photoconductor drum.
In recent years, non-conforming toner containers have come to be widely used. Some of the non-conforming products exhibit different performance from conforming products, and hence the use of the non-conforming toner container may lead to degraded performance of the image forming apparatus.
Accordingly, proposals have been made to urge a user to utilize the conforming toner container, for example by deciding whether a toner container mounted in the image forming apparatus is a conforming product, with a wireless tag attached to the toner container and a radio frequency identification (RFID) communication unit provided in the main body of the image forming apparatus, and displaying a warning message on a display panel, notifying the user to the effect that the non-conforming toner container has been mounted, upon deciding that the mounted toner container is the non-conforming product.